Poker For Dummies Review

A solid learning tool and not much more.

'It's a card game' says the first tutorial step in Poker for Dummies, a budget-priced piece of software published under the EA label. Like the rest of the 'for Dummies' lines of books and games, this one assumes you know essentially nothing about the subject. In that sense, it's a fine product for someone who really wants to know how to play Texas Hold 'Em, Omaha, and 7-Card Stud poker. In addition to describing how each of the poker games work, the program goes into some tips for how to play effectively and offers practice and tournament modes against an AI. Yet overall the package is far too slim to recommend to even the most clueless players.

The game offers an advantage over just reading a Wikipedia entry about poker by letting you put into practice the techniques and strategies it explains. By far the product's greatest asset is a built-in odds calculator for use in Texas Hold 'Em, Omaha, and 7-Card Stud that outputs percentages of your chances to win based on what you're holding, the community cards, and what everyone else is holding, as well as your chances of hitting straights, full houses, pairs, flushes, and all the rest. As a learning tool, it certainly helps to be able to see and play the game from every angle.

An extremely gentle learning curve, great for those totally new to poker.

But once you've pushed through all that and become familiar with the basics of each of the three game types and the general strategies involved, there's not all that much to do. You can play against up to six AI opponents for fake money and use your winning to buy into higher stakes games. With your starting $400 you can enter low limit games and using your winnings progress through the limit ranks until you can enter a no-limit game with $10,000. But, for a $20 product, you might expect there to be more than three game types. Why no 5-card stud? Why no Omaha Hi-Lo? Why no draw poker?

The game just doesn't allow you to spread out your experience very far. You're limited to playing three types of poker against AI opponents who occasionally make highly questionable moves. It's all good for an AI to bluff, in fact that should be expected, but to continue calling raises in a Hold 'Em game with an 8 and 9 of diamonds and JKJ on the flop, none of which were diamonds, and four other players in the game seems more stupid than sly. In another game, three players continued calling raises while holding Q8, Q2, and J7 with the cards K6A64 on the table, and nobody had a flush. It's possible the three opponents were trying to bluff, but still, that's pretty terrible poker.

Also, why not implement online multiplayer for a game like this? It only makes sense that after learning the basics and a few strategies, understanding the difference between a good and bad bet, and getting the feel of how an extended game works that players would want to turn their attention to real opponents instead of the AI. Yet that's not an option here, meaning players looking for a more competitive experience must wade through countless free online services to find something for them. Considering this game is targeting those who are relatively clueless when it comes to poker, this isn't exactly the best result. It makes more sense that players of this basic a skill level would rather play against others with a knowledge and experience base similar to their own like, for instance, other people who bought the same product.

Why would all three of these AI opponents continue calling bets?

Aside from the limitations of game types and extended play beyond the initial learning phases, Poker for Dummies does wrap everything it offers up in slick and attractive interface. Granted it's all coated in the abrasive Dummies-brand construction-equipment yellow, but everything is laid out in a clean, easy-to-interpret fashion that shouldn't throw off the sorts of beginners this game is targeting.

The Verdict

Poker for Dummies sets out to serve as a basic training tool for prospective players, and offers up a nice range of tutorials, statistics, and probability calculations to ease the uninitiated into this particular world of card-based gambling. The main issue is, once you've learned the basics, the game leaves you with little else to do. Only three types of poker are made available, Omaha, Texas Hold 'Em, and 7-Card Stud, and there's no online multiplayer, meaning you'll always be sitting down next to AI opponents who don't seem all that intelligent. While it serves its purpose as an extremely basic training tool, for $20 bucks, it could have offered some more content, at the very least a few more additional styles of poker.